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It took five years of dating and over 200 of them before I was able to say I would love to take you on a date
There are two types of first date. There is the first date with a woman you have actually seen and the blind first date, normally arising from online dating or an introduction from a friend. You could argue that its not ‘blind’ because you have seen a picture of the person on their profile but we all know how you women love to use the most flattering of your pictures so this is not reliable evidence of hotness.
A first date with you if we have met before can get me in a right spin (perhaps these ‘online’ days this should really be called our second date). I know I fancy you or we wouldn’t be having a date, so I will get all worked up about what to say, how to act, what to wear (I regularly buy a new outfit for such occasions) and what I need to do to make you like me.
Believe it or not I also treated most first ‘blind’ dates like this too. Since I first winked at (that still sounds weird) or messaged you I have been busily building you up in my mind. You are a smouldering beauty with a Helena Christensen figure, a funny and engaging personality who has kinky fantasies about slightly overweight middle-aged men.
Every email and phone conversation reinforces my view that you are the one I have been searching for all my life. By the day of our date it is taking all my willpower not to just buy an engagement ring to bring along with me. And then we meet!
I have had so many of those crushing ‘for fuck sake’ moments where I realise as soon as I see you that I just don’t fancy you, or even worse, I really fancy you but can see the crushing disappointment in your eyes as you approach.
That was in the days when I hated first dates.
So what changed to make me love the chance to get out for coffee or a drink with you?
I stopped trying. I let go of the need to impress you and just come on the date to connect with you because you’re another human being, rather than the next wife. As soon as I took the pressure off my need to like you or for you to like me I act began to really enjoy first dates. We humans are sociable creatures and we like to connect with other humans, especially when we have no agenda or ego wrapped up in the conversation. It means I can focus on really getting to learn some stuff about you and connect at a deeper level.
Guess how attractive that made me on dates……………..
To learn all about the hilarious ups and downs of my dating life buy your copy of Tidy up on your way out here
Born to a working class family in Essex, Dave endured a boringly happy childhood. His educational potential was largely squandered by his desire to spend his days pissing about. As a result his clerical career started at sixteen with the civil service and then the NHS. He sustained a lifestyle that saw him just about earning enough to keep himself in beer and fags until his ‘career’ hit a seam of good luck.
He applied for a job, two grades bigger than his current role, and was successful. This was due in no small part to the urgent need for someone and the lack of any other applicants. This break put him into a profession from which his career advanced at reasonable speed. More importantly it allowed him to move into the private sector.
Never confident with women he failed to ask out pretty much every woman he fancied and ended up with an impressive catalogue of female friends, until he finally plucked up the courage to ask his, soon to be fiancé, out. The relationship was to last five years. They never married (there was some confusion between the parties about what being engaged meant in relation to marriage timescales).
His life became one of happy mediocrity with a well paid job and an attractive but underappreciated fiancé. Excitement was provided by a brief flirtation with motorbikes. Then he confronted mortality. At age 28 his mother died and, whilst on the surface he coped well with the grieving process, his life turned 360 degrees.
His coping strategy was to take a job with lots of international travel (his fiancé abandoned him shortly after) and to engage in every adrenalin sport known to man. This wild ride lasted three years before he met, fell in love with, and within a year, married his wife.
He took to marriage like a snake takes to rollers skates. His attempts to surrender to domestic routine, over adventure and unpredictability, were largely unsuccessful and led to an expanding waistline, a penchant for Austin Reed clothes and finally, eight years in, his wife leaving.
Adapting to single life pretty well, all things considered, he embarked on a journey of understanding, and then indulging, his mid life crisis. Snowboarding, sailing, flash cars and clothes, dating any woman that showed even the remotest spark of interest and partying hard (well as hard as his social circle and limited looks allowed).
His career was the one area where success continued to seem assured, so inevitably three years after his divorce he went to work dismantling that. He engineered redundancy from a six figure salary + bonus + benefits and headed into the world with no idea what to do next.
After six months of having fun he trained, and set out as a self employed Business Coach, a role he has stayed with, to date. Through coaching he began to access new ideas and ways of looking at the world and finally finds himself content, happy and living life the way its meant to be lived…in the moment.
Throughout his life only three things have been constant…the support of his family and closest friends, his love of nature and Gary Numan.